Weston asked:
“Did she know he was going to be down here?”
“She says not.”
Poirot paused and then went on.
“Who comes next? Miss Brewster. I find her just a little alarming.” He shook his head. “She has a voice like a man’s. She is gruff and what you call hearty. She rows boats and has a handicap of four at golf.” He paused. “I think, though, that she has a good heart.”
Weston said:
“That leaves only the Reverend Stephen Lane. Who’s the Reverend Stephen Lane?”
“I can only tell you one thing. He is a man who is in a condition of great nervous tension. Also he is, I think, a fanatic.”
Inspector Colgate said:
“Oh, that kind of person.”
Weston said:
“And that’s the lot!” He looked at Poirot. “You seem very lost in thought, my friend?”
Poirot said:
“Yes. Because, you see, when Mrs. Marshall went off this morning and asked me not to tell anyone I had seen her, I jumped at once in my own mind to a certain conclusion. I thought that her friendship with Patrick Redfern had made trouble between her and her husband. I thought that she was going to meet Patrick Redfern somewhere, and that she did not want her husband to know where she was.”
He paused.
“But that, you see, was where I was wrong. Because, although her husband appeared almost immediately on the beach and asked if I had seen her, Patrick Redfern arrived also—and was most patently and obviously looking for her! And therefore, my friends, I am asking myself, who was it that Arlena Marshall went off to meet?”
Inspector Colgate said:
“That fits in with my idea. A man from London or somewhere.”
Hercule Poirot shook his head. He said:
“But, my friend, according to your theory, Arlena Marshall had broken with this mythical man. Why, then, should she take such trouble and pains to meet him?”
Inspector Colgate shook his head. He said:
“Who do you think it was?”
“That is just what I cannot imagine. We have just read through the list of hotel guests. They are all middle-aged—dull. Which of them would Arlena Marshall prefer to Patrick Redfern? No, that is impossible. And yet, all the same, she did go to meet someone—and that someone was not Patrick Redfern.”
Weston murmured:
“You don’t think she just went off by herself?”
Poirot shook his head.
“Mon cher,” he said. “It is very evident that you never met the dead woman. Somebody once wrote a learned treatise on the difference that solitary confinement would mean to Beau Brummel or to a man like Newton. Arlena Marshall, my dear friend, would practically not exist in solitude. She only lived in the light of a man’s admiration. No, Arlena Marshall went to meet someone this morning. Who was it?”
II
Colonel Weston sighed, shook his head and said:
“Well, we can go into theories later. Got to get through these interviews now. Got to get it down in black and white where everyone was. I suppose we’d better see the Marshall girl now. She might be able to tell us something useful.”